Audio bake to f-curves fails with very high numbers
If your sound bake is showing that behaviour try reducing your baking frequency High and Low to within the audible frequency range.

20 to 20,000 Hz

The SI unit of audio frequency is the hertz (Hz). It is the property of sound that most determines pitch. The generally accepted standard range of audible frequencies is 20 to 20,000 Hz, although the range of frequencies individuals hear is greatly influenced by environmental factors.

Audio frequency - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_frequency

Which is likely why the bakes returned rubbish on some audio formats.
The sound drivers addon bakes n frequencies over a channel range.  I've also put in the ability to bake on music note frequencies.  Here is a screenshot of rainbow_road.mp3 baked to the 88 notes of the keys on a piano.

Baked as custom properties on the speaker (data part) object.  Fcurve modifiers are used to map the range of the fcurve. A simple driver can be added to any object, and if using channel 0, in the case of image AH0 is used as a driver on the cone, a simple grid visualiser can be created.